Book Review: WAKING THE MERROW by Heather Rigney

There’s a certain allure to debut novels. The more you read and come to know an author, the more you trust what they put out. Treading new waters, good or bad, is always interesting. WAKING THE MERROW, debut novel from author Heather Rigney, was an interesting experience. Unfortunately, the book fell flat for me, but I am still curious to see what Rigney produces in the future.

The main story follows Evie McFagen. That’s Evie pronounced like “heavy”, and for a reason: our protagonist is an overweight, drunk, generally inept mother, and this combination intrigued me. Rigney’s choice of a highly atypical heroine is bold, but I was never sure how much I was supposed to be rooting for Evie. She knows she’s a mess, and owns it, but the incompetence is thorough enough that she is never personally responsible for her victories over the course of the plot.

That we spend so much time in Evie’s head detracted from the reading experience. Sometimes the prose is unclear; inconsistent italicized thoughts, as well as a constant feed of Evie’s emotions, resulted in a bit of a mess.

More engaging, however, are the flashbacks. Chapters alternate between Evie and glimpses of historical Rhode Island, where the book takes place. The villain(s), the merrow, slowly come into focus through these sections, a parallel to Evie’s growing troubles. This allowed Rigney’s skill to shine a little more, which makes me hopeful for future works.

The plot, unfortunately, leaves the book feeling more like a prologue than anything. Key details and major twists are kept secret with weak justification, then explained so casually as to be jarring. Only near the final third of the book do we get a real grasp on the supernatural world that threatens Evie and her family. It all felt, in the end, like setup for the real story.

WAKING THE MERROW suffers the most from its protagonist, but I could see readers finding her sailor’s mouth and persistence endearing. Barring that, the questionable narrative choices and somewhat lacking plot turned me off, although the book may appeal to fans of dark fantasy, or stories of murderous mermaids. The merrow have only just woken, and there will be two more books for fans of Rigney’s tale.

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   Jared W. Cooper is a Jersey-born writer, gamer, and mostly-coherent genre geek. Between slush reading, writing groups, and editing, he consumes short stories like most people breathe. His Kindle is armed to the teeth, with William Gibson and Ursula le Guin headlining his favorites shelf. His reviews, essays, and the odd short fiction piece can be found, sporadically, at Jaredwcooper.org

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